Atisa and his time machine (Adventures with Hieun Tsang) by Anu Kumar

History as fun-filled adventure

I read about this book on facebook and immediately ordered a copy. I very much liked the idea of  encountering Hieun Tsang as a real person, even if only an imaginary version. Reading and revelling in the author’s imagery and racy plot, marvelling at Priya Kurian’s very stylish illustrations, wishing I’d had books like this to read as a child, I realised that this was one of a series and it did not tell me how old Atisa was, how and when his time machine was created and a few other things I wanted to know. I sent Anu Kumar a set of questions. I have left her replies just as she wrote them, so that anyone who reads this will get a sense of her writing style. Meanwhile, as I eagerly await the next Atisa book, I've been reading the previous ones and bought copies for younger readers too.

Please tell us about your concept of writing history for children in story form.

I guess it began from a short story in comic form I wrote first. This was about a time traveller, actually called Pedro, who ended up in Akbar's palace in Fatehpur Sikri and impressed him with a telescope that was originally Galileo's. 

When I was introduced to then editor at Puffin, Vatsala Kaul-Banerjee, I redeveloped the idea in myriad ways, and thereon was born Atisa and the Seven Wonders.  

It was and remains a mix of fact and fiction and fantasy.  So in the first,  Atisa and the Seven Wonders, the "truths" about the seven ancient wonders are things essentially known about them and the story was built around these.  I used the story of Daedelus and Icarus, the old Greek story when Icarus flies too close to the sun, and the wax on his wings melts, and he drowns tragically.  But since I like happier endings like most people, in this story, Icarus doesn't actually die, his father Daedelus believes this and so he invents this wondrous flying machine.  The machine is stolen by the lonely keeper of the lighthouse at Alexandria (one of the seven ancient wonders) who lands up at Atisa's house somewhere close to us, i.e. Tawang in the northeast.   

It is on this machine that Atisa sets off on his adventure.  But in this book and in the second one, it is his archaeologist mother, Gaea (named after the Greek earth goddess) who usually spurs him to adventure. She is a historian, explorer and archaeologist all rolled up, and is always seeking to solve things left unresolved in the past.  Atisa's father, Gesar, named after a mythical Tibetan king, is on the other hand, an inventor and scientist. Some of the additions to the flying machine have been Gesar's contributions such as the sound catcher - a machine that picks up sounds even from the past; the weather lantern that changes color as an indicator, and then the decoder which is a kind of makeshift translator.  In every successive adventure, he comes up with intriguing inventions that add to the fun of the story. 

I got the idea for the second book, when Atisa goes in search of Hiuen Tsang or Xuanzang, from a book that the latter himself wrote or is believed to have written and of which there is an English translation as well (see on Gutenberg). The Chinese monk wrote about constant attempts on his life and how jealous rivals tried often to throw him off track.  Atisa of course makes sure that all is well with Hiuen Tsang and that he returns safely to China.  But there are several hair-raising adventures in the process - in places like yes, Bamiyan, Mathura, Prayag, Nalanda and even Badami. 

The third and latest one is of course set in the time of Chandragupta II of the Guptas. He did wage war against the Sakas in the west but the bit about the Nine Gems is more story than fact, but nevertheless its fascinating story.  And I did want to bring in Lilavati, the astronomer Varahamihira's amazingly brilliant daughter,  and it is with her help, that Atisa gets to the end of this mystery, reveal the evil intentions of all those who'd wish Kalidasa and by extension,  the Gupta empire, harm.  

Who is Atisa?

He is a 14 year old time travelling detective.  I think he will grow up a bit in the next adventures. He loves to travel, knows several languages and always retains a sense of context, despite the many pasts he goes back to :)  He's really fun. In this adventure,  In search of Kalidasa, he is in that phase when he wants to wear his hair a bit longer, like in the manner of the old warriors and is a bit sad when it is over and he knows Lilavati belongs to the past, his past too. But I guess that's all part of it.  

The name actually comes from Atisa Dipankara Srijnana.  My editor and I tossed up various names and she liked this one and its stayed. Atisa Dipankara was a revered Buddhist teacher, from the Pala kingdom (Bengal), of the 11th century CE. Born into royalty, he travelled to Tibet and is responsible in a sense for restoring Buddhism there after its repression. 

Please tell us something about the names you use (Atisa, Bojax, Dos Tum, any others …) and your process of choosing them.

Actually its quite random and initially tough.  For some days before I fix upon a name that is ideal to the character in the story, I experiment with how they sound, how the name would look on a person, hoping for the right mix. With names for the different books set in different pasts, I try to make them fun and sort of local too.  In the Hiuen Tsang book, Bojax, and Dos Tum are essentially Central Asian names, people Hiuen Tsang may have encountered. There were more complex names too but I didn't want to make the reading cumbersome. A name can't be so hard that you can't unroll your tongue from around it. 

How did you get this idea, and what are the main historical themes in the three books you’ve written so far?

I didn't begin with the dream of a series, quite honestly.  With the first book, as I researched about the Seven Wonders, it was real fun, and having an adventure around it was doubly so. It came to me, with all modesty, that it's something that really hasn't been tried before, and even that thought was hard to accept.  

But once Atisa and the Seven Wonders got a few good reviews (in an age when Facebook wasn't the entity it is today) and I had the confidence that I could write, that I was indeed a writer, I realized it could go on, that Atisa could have more adventures. And indeed, for Atisa, its only just begun. 

What are we going to get next?

In the next one, I use an old story related to Marco Polo, the Venetian in Kublai Khan's court.  The Great Khan's daughter is betrothed to the Persian king and it is Marco who is chosen to escort her across the seas - all the way from the South China Sea, down the Sumatra Strait, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea to Persia. But it is in Malabar, where the pearl thieves are a menace that something happens.  You must read to find that out.  

How do you balance fact with fiction in these stories?

I think that varies. In the first two, I did bring in a lot of facts that you find in history books - the Seven Wonders, Hiuen Tsang's travels and the places he visited. In the Kalidasa one, you could say there's more of the fiction element but its true to facts relating to the menace of the Sakas, I also use the story narrated in the 'Devichandragupta', but the rare eclipse, Varahamihira's lost scrolls and Lilavati's telescope - yes, that's all fiction and it was really fun.

The Last Wave by Pankaj Sekhsaria

Island Purgatory

The Last Wave is set in one of the most beautiful, pristine places on this earth. Its primary characters are a young man and woman – a gentle, sincere, capable pair. We travel with them through the Andamans, experience its complex environment, its many distinct and exotic communities, learn about its fascinating history, and observe life, administration, ‘development’ and tourism on the islands.
The Last Wave is not a romantic novel only because it has a young hero and heroine who encounter each other in this honeymoon paradise. It is also the romance of its author with a place he loves and has worked for decades to protect, and for whose survival he fears. The novel was launched in Pune yesterday and I felt honoured when Pankaj Sekhsaria invited me to be ‘in conversation’ with him at the event.
I had met Pankaj years ago, I think it was 1996 or 97, to profile him for a glossy magazine called Marwar, a short meeting with a lasting impact. What I learnt from Pankaj about the Andamans in our hour together all those years ago stayed with me, and I passed on the message to whomever I could, whenever I could. The message was basically the manner in which the indigenous peoples of the Andamans were being colonized by the government and and the people of India, and robbed of their culture and dignity. As a people ourselves recently freed from colonial yoke and all too conscious of the loss of our own precious heritage, making do as we are with our veneer of superimposed non-native culture, many like me have felt sad, and helpless to repair the damage that has been done or even prevent the continuing damage.
Reading Pankaj’s book and marvelling at the many situations which he worked in to show different aspects of the islands, I wondered whether he had written it as a means to reach out to more people to share the Andamans tragedy, and some of the questions I asked him at the launch were aimed at finding out whether this was so. What I understood from Pankaj's replies was that his novel was a purely creative enterprise; an attempt to put all that he knew about the Andamans into a fictional setting, and not particularly aimed at creating awareness or social change. However, while I did find it an engrossing story, the biggest value I got from it was the enormous amount of information it has. I also feel that this is an extremely important book for the way in which it entertains readers while giving us insights into different ways of living, and showing us the delight and wealth of being sensitive to and promoting cultures radically different from our own.

Healer: the biography of Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy by Pranay Gupte

The foolish reviewer

A friend sent me this message a short while ago, something she saw on facebook:

Does anyone know who Saaz Aggarwal is? Well, let me tell you: She's a Pune-based writer who "reviewed" my biography, Healer: Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy and the Transformation of India (Penguin) for Hindustan Times. In my opinion, I wonder if she actually read the 600-page book. For example, she says I did not deal with health insurance! Whaaa? There's an entire chapter on health insurance. And so on. Ordinarily, I ignore foolish reviewers on the grounds that they are, well, foolish, and that they have some sort of agenda. But this so-called review is egregiously misinformed. It misrepresents my book. The next time that Manjula Narayan, books editor of Hindustan Times, makes assignments, she should at least insist that reviewers read a book before "reviewing" it.

My ‘review’ of this book actually appeared in Hindustan Times on 5 April 2014, and if you like you can read it here:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/booksreviews/book-review-healer-a-biography-of-dr-prathap-c-reddy/article1-1204417.aspx or at the bottom of this post, along with images of the facebook conversation I had with its author, Pranay Gupte, who had posted the comment above, along with a photograph of me.
It’s not nice to spit and scratch in public, no? So I did ‘like’ on the comment. Then I noticed that this was a 'sponsored' link. This meant that Pranay Gupte had paid money to facebook so that my photo and the defamatory comment would be seen by more people!
Here is a transcript of my response, and the next two comments:

Saaz: Uh oh Pranay Gupte ... this SPONSORED link misses a few other things I said in my review:
Presented as the author’s year-long journey in writing it, Healer includes irrelevant description of each interview: the interiors of Sheila Dikshit’s ‘lovely bungalow in the Lutyens Zone in New Delhi’; the CV of the architect of Apollo and information about his leisure pursuits; lyrics of a song New York financier Richard Cashin sang at a Chennai cocktail party; and more. The interviews are weighted with banal hallelujahs: “Dr Reddy possesses great strength of character”; “it is rare to find a leader with such infectious enthusiasm and high principles as Dr Reddy”; “a handsome man with exquisitely polite manners”; “the so-called learning curve happens faster at Apollo than anywhere else I have seen”; and dozens more. Pruning these and the rather excessive repetition (that Dr Reddy’s granddaughter married ‘superstar’ Chiranjeevi’s son appears four times) would have made Healer easier on the wrist.And a whole lot of other stuff I LIKED about your book too :-)
Pranay Gupte: Well, I appreciate your response, Saaz. Cheers from Delhi, and I hope we meet in more pleasant circumstances.
Saaz: What I wrote was a measured, balanced review AFTER reading, making notes and mulling on every page in your book. What you've done here is post a slanderous comment along with my photograph. Nice, eh! (Incidentally, I never said that you "did not deal with health insurance". What I said was, "Controversial topics such as vaccinations, the impact of health insurance and tort, and the basic concerns of access and affordability to best-quality medical care for the majority of Indians are not delved.")

I've been away from this blog for far too long. Thank you, Pranay Gupte, for getting me back to it.

Postscript: The morning after I wrote this post and shared it on my facebook wall, tagging Pranay Gupte, I find that he seems to have 'unfriended' or perhaps 'blocked' me. I wonder why!

Pranay Gupte is a high-profile journalist, sufficiently well-connected to get the President of India to launch his book for him. He responds to a genuine critique by making malicious and ill-founded comments about the reviewer.
Does this mean that book reviewers must always praise books by well-known people, even when they are full of holes, for fear of vindictive reprisal?
Perhaps this is the reason that responsible books editors like Manjula Narayan of Hindustan Times (also maligned in Pranay Gupte's sponsored facebook post) try, whenever possible, to give books for review to writers with a track record of understanding and analyzing books, in addition to having a respected body of their own work.

And the HT review on 4 April 2014:

Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy is a cardiologist and entrepreneur. He founded Apollo Hospital in Chennai in 1979, and grew it to a chain of corporate hospitals, 38 owned and 13 managed, treating patients from 120 countries. This book shows us how Apollo created opportunities that brought Indian doctors settled abroad back to India, and by investing in technology, helped specialists to advance professionally. It credits Dr Reddy with introducing a culture of competence, and a more soothing environment, into Indian hospitals; implementing emergency services; and influencing Tamil Nadu to develop the most advanced ‘cadaver policy’ in India.

Dr Reddy comes across as kind, sensible, and generous to colleagues. He meditates and prays daily – but is also influenced by mythology, astrology and godmen. An entrepreneur and innovator from a young age, he made a fundamental business mistake when expanding into Sri Lanka. When two of his four daughters wanted to be doctors, he discouraged them, now he would like one of his grandsons to become one. Once a fussy eater, he was difficult to cook for, and people would ‘tremble’ at his sometimes petulant behaviour in reaction to a dish he didn’t like. Working at Massachusetts General in Boston in the 1960s, he was once slapped by a patient enraged at being treated by an Indian doctor. Dr Reddy’s boss wanted the patient discharged; Dr Reddy convinced him not to react to the bad behaviour and treat the patient kindly.

Healer also has information about healthcare in India and anecdotes about well-known personalities. We learn about organ transplants and innovations such as robotic surgery. Charming footnotes provide context when required. However, the challenges of raising standards of clinical care and JCI accreditation are not described. Controversial topics such as vaccinations, the impact of health insurance and tort, and concerns of access and affordability for the majority, are skirted.

Presented as the author’s year-long journey in writing it, Healer includes irrelevant description of each interview: the interiors of Sheila Dikshit’s ‘lovely bungalow in the Lutyens Zone in New Delhi’; the CV of the architect of Apollo and information about his leisure pursuits; lyrics of a song New York financier Richard Cashin sang at a Chennai cocktail party; and more. The interviews are weighted with banal hallelujahs: “Dr Reddy possesses great strength of character”; “it is rare to find a leader with such infectious enthusiasm and high principles as Dr Reddy”; “a handsome man with exquisitely polite manners”; “the so-called learning curve happens faster at Apollo than anywhere else I have seen”; and dozens more. Pruning these and the rather excessive repetition (that Dr Reddy’s granddaughter married ‘superstar’ Chiranjeevi’s son appears four times) would have made Healer easier on the wrist.

This book also succumbs to what Patrick French calls “the distorting lens of the present”, using phrases like “back in the 1970s” and providing long lists of recent associates. Technology new in 2013 will soon recede; to specify that a “technique is truly revolutionizing spinal surgery” is to ensure that a book will soon be out-dated.

Some Hits Some Misses by Prasanta Choudhury

The mind should dominate the ego

I know the author of this book as a person of few but well-chosen words; the same can be said of this book. Prasanta Choudhury retired from corporate life in 2002 as President of Formica India.
Some Hits Some Misses contains anecdotes from his working life and they cover offbeat incidents, personal insights into human relations from a management perspective, a close-up view of the Indian manufacturing industry in its most difficult phase, and others. It was interesting to note Prasanta’s experience of how common sense fares in a hierarchical establishment.
I found the book very well written – charming, in fact – and carrying important messages not just for managers but all who enjoy life and want to live better. What I liked best was the last section, in which Prasanta goes back to work after his retirement and experiences work life outside the glamour of the corporate world – but also learns a set of ‘today’ skills out of the reach of many of his contemporaries. 

One of the things I did not like was the periodic textbook-like discourses on management. I somehow don’t think it is in Prasanta’s nature to preach; for some reason I believe that he thinks (like I do) that the best lessons come upon one when in a relaxed and receptive frame of mind, such as while listening to a story. Prasanta’s stories have their lessons subtly woven into them and I found the commentary superfluous.
When I asked him about this he said that he had been told that early drafts of the book were too autobiographical and that he had rewritten it with the text-bookish material. He also told me that he had removed full chapters which were autobiographical.
I felt really sorry to hear that, as India gears itself to become one of the world’s most productive manufacturing nations, market demands still foster the creation of masses of rote-learning clones. The true managers, of course, will be the ones who will seek out the autobiographical stories. They are the ones who understand their value, because they have the maturity to absorb the wisdom and insights that can be gathered from someone like Prasanta Choudhury.
Even more than its management lessons, this book’s value to me is as a first-person record of the early days of manufacturing in India. To have mentioned the year in which each incident took place would have increased that value and I felt sorry it wasn’t done.

And all is said by Zareer Masani

Black and white
I would normally not be attracted to a book with an archaic title, and which claims to reveal intimate information about people I’m not much interested in. But my friend Manjula Sen, whose opinion I value, said it was a good book – and I’m glad I bought and read it.
And All Is Said is a memoir, with the focus on the author’s parents’ troubled relationship. Minoo and Shakuntala Masani were exceptional individuals, at one time important characters in Indian political and economic life. The book intersperses their son Zareer’s memories and insights into past events with actual letters and diary entries written by his parents, both of whom write beautifully too – though much of what is published here was never meant for anyone else to read, and that vaguely troubled me.
What I did enjoy were the real-life glimpses into recent Indian history: Minoo Masani’s violin lessons from Count Odone Savini who also taught Mehli Mehta, father-to-be of the conductor Zubin ... the life and contributions of Sir JP Srivastava, Shakuntala’s father ... Minoo’s father’s refusal to allow his son to be given a grant (the Law examinership at Bombay University) when he was in the chair:

This is a country full of nepotism. Everyone is helping his own sons and nephews. Somebody has got to set an example. That’s what I’ve done, and I’m sorry you’re at the receiving end.

... and many more.
I liked the endorsement of the now dissipated knowledge that Independence was won for India by Indians who had been educated in England.

Father often used to say that the British Raj ‘played cricket’ in the way it dealt with nationalist agitators like himself. These Indian nationalists, after all, were the children of British education and liberal values, steeped in the literature of Western humanism and radicalism. Except in their treatment of avowed ‘terrorists’, the authorities used to torture or gratuitous violence and treated political prisoners with the respect they deserved, even during times of greatest crisis like the Quit India agitation during World War II. “Had the British authorities not behaved like honourable officers and gentlemen,” Father always maintained, “Gandhi’s non-violent campaigns would never have been possible.”

Much else has changed in the world around us. The Masani family lived as tenants of an aristocratic half-French Muslim called Barodawalla du Randé in a home with beautiful mosaic floors which were scrubbed with soap and water every week, high ceilings, a multitude of windows with elaborate wooden shutters and long verandas with elaborately carved, latticed, wooden railings looking out to the Arabian Sea, which lapped at the foot of Cumballa Hill. This is architecture a contemporary Mumbai-dweller would recognize – but these homes have long lost their glory to laundry hanging in those balconies alongside money plants in tinpots.
Zareer Masani was deeply attached to his mother but not to his father – and what touched me most about this book is his painstaking honesty in presenting his father’s point of view fairly and without judgement, while describing just as honestly, but in a judgemental way, his mother’s behaviour and how it affected him.
You can read more about this book in Manjula Sen’s interview with Zareer Masani HERE

The Reluctant Detective by Kiran Manral

But what about the ghost?
Kiran Manral, I, and two other writers, Shital Mehra and Tishani Doshi, were on a panel together at an event for new books, Fresh off the Shelf, at the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai yesterday. We each read out a little from our respective books and answered audience questions. It was fun.
I had just finished reading The Reluctant Detective and wondered, when Kiran Manral introduced me to her husband and son before the event, how much of them I had already met in the book!
Kay, a young housewife and mother in Bombay, is the giddy-headed narrator. At first I found the language convoluted but once it had made me laugh aloud a couple of times, I decided to stop being judgemental and enjoy myself. The rapid-fire monologue is even in tone and describes the people and events in Kay’s life – her obsession with clothes, her hyperactive son (um – wonder where he gets that from), her neighbours, friends and rather serious husband. Check this.

I am a kind-hearted sensitive soul. I take stray cockroaches from my home and let them loose in the balcony, hoping they find other homes to inhabit, favourable wind conditions permitting. Before they hit the asphalt. It is not in my nature to splat them with a slipper. Murder and violence of any sort disturbs me. I cannot watch news bulletins without tears trickling down my face, and if by some chance of fate I land on a documentary on starving children, the world is guaranteed a full-fledged howling session.

A dialogue that had me in splits was between Kay and her housemaid Jamuna, when she instructs her not to disturb her unless there was need for immediate evacuation of the building.

Jamuna nodded the kind of nod she has when she values her life and limbs.
“Phone aaya toh?” she asked warily.
“Take a message,” I replied.
“Urgent bola to?” she persisted with the kind of attention to detail which has me pleased should she choose to use it to get that last bit of grime out from behind the door in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
“Saab ka number de do,” I replied in the kind of tone which brooked no further conversation. But not to Jamuna.
“Saab ne nahin uthaya to?” she went on.
I blew a mini fuse and did some yelling, and ended with closing the door hard and loud, and had the effect quite ruined with the child pushing the door open the next second and asking me to hop and shaoud laoudly agin so he could call his frens to watch.

There is even a dead body – two of them, actually – so I kept thinking that Kay was one of those Inspector Clousseau type bumbling detectives but was ultimately disappointed there because there’s no serious building up of suspense or the kind of dramatic revelations that one expects in a murder mystery.
At Kala Ghoda, Kiran explained that she had wanted to write about the specific demographic that she is immersed in – that of young, educated women who have chosen to devote their lives to their families rather than career. This she has done well – Kay is a magnificent example of this group with all her matching accessories, Wodehouse-Blyton-Austen language (including sharp spikes of Manral original), domestic staff, incessant tweets, and more. And The Reluctant Detective is a funny, enjoyable book – but not really a serious detective story.

The Wednesday Soul by Sorabh Pant

I'm dead - but nothing seems to have changed!
Sorabh Pant and I were neighbours, lying placid and box-like next to each other, on the pages of Sunday Mid-day for some years – an adhering subliminal kinship. Sorabh is a stand-up comedian too and the first time I saw him was when he performed in Pune and my unladylike guffaws earned me an Oscar from him. I was looking forward to this book, though a bit worried that I might have to ignore it in favour of saying rude things. Luckily, it turned out to be well written and with a solid plot, racy, spiced with romance and violence, and I really, really wanted to know what was going to happen at the end. But it wasn’t just that. As a book about the ‘afterlife’ this one has its share of deep philosophy (with Sorabh’s inimitable twist). As a book written by a voracious reader, it had quite a few references I didn’t get. And as a book by a really funny guy, it had a range of ha-ha moments – from ‘nooooo!’ groans with eyebrows raised, to any number of mild tummy tickles, and a few times I laughed like anything. I loved the reassuringly familiar overtones of Sorabh’s hereafter – in particular its bumbling bureaucracy, its hyperventilating junior executives, the crazy superimposition of Indian scriptures with Indian Penal Code, its free employment of fictional and historical characters, and even a movie (“Chaplin directed by Hitchcock”). I enjoyed the way he suddenly tossed in phrases that looked like they had been dragged in from another book and dressed up a bit:

Moments later she wished she hadn’t opened her eyes.

Unhurt, but shaken.

I also found the caricatures in this book hilarious – especially the language in which lack of idiom gets a special Sorabh spin. Says the policeman:

Money accomplishes wonders. Madam, do you even know the bribery costs for undergoing the wonders of my “investigation”? They is huge.

Now, instead of spoiling all the surprises by describing the book and its people in 200 words as us books guys are supposed to do, I thought I should give Sorabh a chance to let him reveal only as much as he wants:

How would you react if someone said that your book was what would happen if Douglas Adams and Arthur Koestler decided to have a baby?

I would first want to know how they actually met and who initiated the courting, and also the tougher question of the biological creation. Then, I would smile - because, I love Douglas, even though, my limited literary pursuits have not yet led me toward Koestler, though they shall now. I want to know who wrote the words of my father (or mother).

I enjoyed the innovative names your characters had … Chitr, Kutsa, Harithi, Air-Awat, Bàri … but was a bit mystified … could you help?

I actually did some insane research for all these characters. For me, the character's name has got to resonate with their actions and their personality. Chitr is short for Chitragupta, the accountant of the Hindu afterlife. It seemed funny to give a burly, ass kicking dude a woman's name.
Kutsa was Indra's right hand man, who apparently betrayed him and went out there and did the monkey (sex) with Indra's wife, Sachi. It would have been a cliché to name the villain, Ravana, Arjun or Rampal or whatever. So, I dug deeper for someone who would be an utter immoral bastard.
Harithi is my continuing fascination with North East women - they're gorgeous and fascinating. They never felt the same about me. I did lots of research but I think it either means, 'protector of children', or 'eye seeing'. I've forgotten, but, once you read the book - you'll know why both those names fit.
Air-Awat is of course based on Ayrawata, the legendary flying elephant in Hindu mythology. The story goes that he has eight Eledactyls (elephants that evolved from pterodactyls and can hence, fly - oh, it's complex :)) who work with him in the afterlife. So, his airline is Air-Awat (like Air India but, with less cancelled flights) and Ayrawata is his name (Sanskrit pronunciation).
Bàri is a detective in the afterlife who used to be a Swiss rescue dog, a St. Bernard. He is based on Barry, who was an actual St. Bernard who rescued roughly 50+ people in the 1950s. I changed his name to Bàri, because it sounded vaguely Swiss, even though, it's not!
There's also Khangard - a depraved bird of the afterlife who is based on Garuda. Khangard is the Indonesian version of Garuda.

When you were writing the book, what exactly were you ‘on’ and where can we get some?

Mainly my own story!! I was obsessed with this world for five years - it's the ultimate drug. And, also a mixture of pineapple juice, wine and just a small kilo of cocaine.

Fate, Fraud And A Friday Wedding by Bhavna Rai

Neel and Anand
I didn’t like the title of this book but Bhavna Rai emailed me a link to a teaser on her website and it promised a lot of action. So I decided to go ahead, and must say I was very impressed. It wasn’t just the fast-packed action and the well-thought-out and carefully-built-up plot. It was the authentic detail of setting, and its unusually perceptive application of everyday situations, that I felt made this book really stand out.
At one point I worried a little about one of the main characters who has studied at New York University – but is totally disconnected from the letters of credit and purchase orders at her father’s import-export business where she works. Until I realised that the whole point of being an import-export heiress is that you can go abroad to study and get a good education without ever caring a bit about tedious necessities like LCs and POs.
Other people and situations in this book are equally genuine. We get to watch a client presentation by an IT outsourcing firm, see how the team thinks and reacts, and how the client team behaves. And to observe the eccentricities of a call centre floor – but also the dynamics at an ‘exclusive’ golf club in Delhi, and a havan conducted in the hope of resuscitating a failing business. There are possessive and emotionally castrating parents – and I loved the instructions their son gives his long suffering American girlfriend before taking her to meet them.
Bhavna Rai showcases the social changes catalysed by the fast-opening Indian economy well. And her focus on the many different man-woman relationship formats in this book does a really good job of exposing human needs and points of vulnerability.
I enjoyed this book so much that I almost didn’t get irritated by its numerous clichés and clumsy proofreading. I asked Bhavna Rai what she’s working on now and was very disappointed not to hear that there’s another blockbuster on the way soon – instead, she said:

Some ideas have been taking shape, but I haven’t committed to any of them, yet

Hurry, will you, girl!

When I told her I found this title annoying she replied,

My manuscript was initially entitled "What time is it in Delhi?" but then it was suggested to me that I need a more descriptive title which is when I changed it to the alliterative title it now has.

And when I asked her which authors' books hers should be displayed alongside in a store, she said:

I'm part of the new breed of India's contemporary writers, so probably alongside Chetan Bhagat, Karan Bajaj and Advaita Kala.

Well – this I definitely do not agree with.
If it was my store, this book would be next to Jeffrey Archer’s, not Chetan Bhagat’s.

Now … rereading what I just wrote, I suppose I should clarify, for the record: Bhavna Rai didn’t pay me. And I don’t know her at all – in fact, we aren’t even facebook friends (yet). And I’m wondering whether I should be embarrassed about all my lavish praise. But perhaps not – because I know I’m unlikely to be so very effusive while writing about a well-publicised book by a well-known author.

The Fatwa Girl by Akbar Agha

Engrossing, informative - and sad
One of the most insistent thoughts in my mind as I read and enjoyed The Fatwa Girl was that a book could actually be a good book even if it doesn’t have a strongly pervasive literary quality.
For the last several years, the books I’ve read coming out of Pakistan have been of a standard of English that easily matched up to the best writing anywhere in the world. Even Moni Mohsin, with her giddy-headed and ungrammatical character Butterfly, has a style that clearly arises from an orthodox, rather elite tradition of English literature. For the first time I was reading a Pakistani English book written in language drawn from a wider section of the bell curve; one that even used ‘flouted’ when it meant to say ‘flaunted’. And never once did it upset me.
I think the main reason for my easy acceptance was that I found the plot very interesting, and revelled in the wealth of detail about Pakistani history and the different aspects of its religion and culture which are easily woven in to it.
The story is told by Omar, a young man from an upper middle class family in Karachi. The Fatwa girl is his neighbour and we learn how, despite being from religious sects that detest each other, they become friends. Amina is a smart, carefree young woman. What is it that turns her into a suicide bomber? The suspense builds up as we find out. And, as Akbar Agha takes us to this final turn in the storyline, we journey through a variety of concepts and landscapes: historical information from the Arab world and the subcontinent which contributed to the fabric of modern-day Pakistan; the myths that arose because of the nature of its people; the contrast between traditional and modern lifestyles and ways of thinking; the economic conditions which have allowed corruption to flourish and created power blocks and an ever-widening rift between socio-economic classes. From Karachi to Lahore to the beautiful but desecrated Swat and even a cameo from the Pakistani effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan; from Kipling to Lear to Jung; from comparing the plight of oppressed women in Pakistan and the USA: the fabric of this book arises from this knowledgeable author’s perspective on his country and the world. Says Omar,

I recalled the moment we laid Grandpa into the grave and a strange thought entered my mind. It made me think differently about religion from that day on.
I thought, a billion people can’t be wrong. But a billion people would swear that Grandfather would go to Hell for saying Jesus is the Son of God. Another billion would swear he would go to Heaven for saying Jesus is the Son of God. Which billion would be right?

Reading The Fatwa Girl, I wondered whether the story, too, was drawn from something Akbar Agha had experienced himself, and I emailed him with a few questions. He replied:

Perhaps the only thing I share in common with my protagonist Omar, who eventually, like me, joins the Foreign Service, is the feeling that the sorrow of parting is never sweet. I was a bachelor for many years in the Service and just when you got to really know someone you’d receive orders for transfer to another country. I guess the sadness of parting from someone you’ve become intimate with is reflected in Omar’s story.
If the Shia-Sunni divide is at the core of my story it’s because I’ve felt its presence even as a schoolboy. My best friend at school was someone I’d hang out with most of the day, go to movies and parties and dances together and do all the fun things teenagers do – except during the month of Muharram when we couldn’t meet at all because he was busy attending religious meetings or participating in self-flagellation which as a Sunni I couldn’t understand, and during this entire month my best buddy would become an alien to me. I’ve always felt the divide between the two sects should have been repaired a thousand years, but it’s no better now than when it started and will eventually raise its head even among the best of friends.

I asked Akbar Agha about what he is writing now and he said he has just completed a novel entitled The Moon Belongs to Everyone. Its main character is Alvi, a young Pakistani in America, a barista at a Seattle Starbucks, but his grandmother thinks he’s a barrister, and this results in a comical situation. He described the book in some detail, and it struck me that it would also very likely be filled with interesting information and perceptions, and include an element of rising suspense, both features which I had enjoyed very much in this book too.

1/7 Bondel Road by Gautam Benegal

Tutul’s stories
Gautam Benegal added me on facebook, we had many friends in common, and when I saw his paintings, particularly his Mumbai Irani café ones, I was impressed indeed. Last week I saw this book on his wall and ordered it online for just Rs145. It turned out to be good value for money.
1/7 Bondel Road is a collection of short stories set in Calcutta in the 1970s. The cover design, the layout and the paper quality are all excellent. Best of all, this book is well written and I found most of the stories to be of a very high quality. They give a vivid experience of a region of this world in a particular section of time.
In the 1970s, the impressive industrial base developed by the British in and around Calcutta was on its last legs and factories were closing. The city is full of ditches and other depredations of the CMDA, the Calcutta Merry Diggers’ Association, and even the street cleaners have heard about Venice. To cut the cellotape holding a box closed, a smart kid would run and bring a blade, unscrewing his father’s razor to get it out. Keshto is opening a fish plate shop and his clients will be the Bengali taxi drivers who generally stopped to answer “Nature’s call” near the corner of the park in Ballygunge Phari. To install a black-and-white television in your home is a profound ceremony that involves confusion, much passion, and involvement from all in the neighbourhood. Sit and watch and you will see a new Baul (till then just a fake because he was only a Sharma and not a Das) take birth on stage. And also a cyclist who will not stop for three days (food, bath, big job, small job, all on the cycle itself) to raise money to buy medicines for his six-month-old son.

These stories are told by a child, and when I asked Gautam Benegal on facebook chat how much of it came from his own childhood, he replied, “Quite a bit, actually...”
So you might as well know that Tutul’s father is a well-known artist and he has an extremely annoying elder brother who reads the Communist Manifesto at the dinner table and writes “Enjoyed the Cubist undercurrent in your work” in a visitors’ book at of their father’s friend's exhibition.

Two of the stories made me laugh like anything. In one, Tutul is travelling by train and speaks English in a fake accent, pretending to be from Marlinspike Hall in Somerset (his parents are settled there; they sell coal to Newcastle). His copassengers' responses are brilliant.

In the other, Tutul, despairing at ever getting an objective critique of his artistic output, invites a pair of children street singers in to look at his work. “Hahah…,” said Gautam Benegal, “Yeah...that one is 100 per cent genuine...”

Bangalore calling by Brinda S Narayan

Call Centre Tapestry
I picked this book up without much enthusiasm, finding the title and cover unappealing, and the thought, “Yawn, could there be something here that Chetan Bhagat might have missed?”
Even after reading a few pages I was still thinking pompously, “Hm, yes, while that one could be called Great Fun – we’d have to use adjectives like ‘pleasurable’, ‘enjoyable’ or ‘delightful’ for this.”
As I read, a more appropriate comparison struck me: if One Night in a Call Centre was a McDonald’s burger, then Bangalore Calling was a wedding feast by the best caterer in town.
The book opens with Yvette leaning on the trainer’s desk in Room #3 and appraising the agents as they stream in after a tea break.
Yvette is an interesting person – intelligent, self-contained, and with all the attributes of a good narrator. In the next chapter, however, the focus changes and our new protagonist is Panduranga, a driver of one of the call centre’s pick-up cabs - and we get to learn something about his family, his aspirations, and what he thinks about as he drives.
It wasn’t until I had read another two chapters, one giving us a view of the life of Natalie, an American woman who works with the American client of the Bangalore call centre and whom we had met briefly through the eyes of both Yvette and Panduranga; and the other showing us how another young woman, Bitty, copes with her life and her job as an agent at the call centre, that I understood how this book worked. Through a number of very different characters it takes us into different homes and minds and through them gives a good look at different Indian cultures and lifestyles and how each of the people representing it has reacted to the American influence and aspirations introduced by their association with the call centre.
Bangalore Calling is very well written and the story compelling. I wondered why it had not received more fanfare and felt curious to know more about the writer so I mailed her to ask from where the idea to write this book came from. She replied,

I was working as a quality consultant with a global call centre, and like Yvette, the trainer in Bangalore Calling, I was intrigued and disturbed by the identity changes I was witnessing. By then, I had worked for nearly fifteen years in various corporate jobs and I had a gnawing sense that I should be doing something else. So I took a sabbatical and conducted research at three centres. Bangalore Calling is the outcome of my study.

The publishers of this book tell us that its author “has worked for fifteen years in the corporate sector. She holds a BA in Economics from Wellesley College and an MA in Communication from Stanford University. She currently lives in Bangalore.”
After looking into the souls of Brinda S Narayan’s characters, I felt this was just a bit too tame and complained that readers of a book so strewn with anthropology deserved a less clinical description of its author. She said:

I've always been a wide reader and I'm curious about how larger forces act on families and individuals. Having been a working mother for several years, I've also been fascinated by the interactions between life and work. Besides reading, I dabble with paints at a very amateur level. I'm married and have two kids.

I was now curious to hear about Brinda S Narayan’s next book, which I look forward to reading, but all she would tell me was

I'm currently working on a novel, and though it's too early to talk about the theme, I can tell you this: it's not set at a workplace.

The Convert by Deborah Baker

A conversation with Deborah
Open magazine sent me this book to read, saying: “Since both of you write biographies, I thought you might connect!”
I read and enjoyed it very much, finding it an excellent combination of information and entertainment. While I read, I thought about how I might have gone about a similar task, and how I would feel now I held the book in my hands. I had a very interesting interaction with Deborah Baker and here's what I wrote for Open:

Deborah Baker is a biographer and columnist. Her first book, In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding was shortlisted for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Biography and her second, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, also won critical acclaim. Like the other two, this book is also about an unusual person who lived on the fringe and proceeded to make a considerable impact on the world around her: Maryam Jameelah, who was born Margaret Marcus in 1934 to a family of Reformed Jews, converted to Islam, and went to live in Pakistan when she was 28 years old.
Starting with the fragmented records she found in nine boxes in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of The New York Public Library, Deborah Baker has established chronologies and, “teasing the colour of emotion from taciturn documents,” painted a vivid picture of this woman, the life she led, and the impact her writing had.
The Convert begins with a series of letters between Maryam and her host in Pakistan, Mawlana Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi. Promising adventure and excitement, they set the tone for what follows. Maryam arrives in Pakistan and settles down. However, less than fifty pages later, she is writing her letters from the Paagal Khanaah on Jail Road in central Lahore. I turned the pages agog, urgent questions arising in my mind – only to find each one answered in good time, as the book unfolded.
I had begun with a certain weariness about having to read a sneering treatise against someone’s personal choices, a feeling inspired by blurbs on the book jacket which spoke of “misfit” and “lunacy of conversion”. However, Deborah Baker was detached and objective in describing Maryam Jameelah as well as her own journey of discovery of Maryam’s life. This made me curious to know how she felt about having these judgemental phrases offered out of context to readers even before they started reading.
She explained,

Maryam referred to herself as a misfit on numerous occasions. Perhaps the quote you are referring to says more about Fatima Bhutto than Maryam Jameelah. Anyway, readers will undoubtedly have their own ideas. There are many different forms of lunacy in the book, the war in Iraq providing an excellent example.

True enough, there were other disturbing elements here unrelated to conversion. In December 1956, struggling to make sense of her life, Margaret Marcus complained of discrimination by her male rightwing professors at New York University – while her psychiatrist, Dr Harper, “only wants to talk about my virginity”. Her passion for the wronged Palestinians had her flinging a newspaper on the breakfast table where her parents sat drinking coffee, scattering silverware to the floor and shouting, “The Israelis are no better than the Nazis. They are doing everything the Nazis did! I hope the Egyptians defeat every last one of them.”
Then, the book touches on descriptions of psychiatric treatment in the US in the early 1960s: strapping the patient tightly in icy bandages for hours at a time on a table; insulin and electro shock therapies, lobotomy, tube feeding; psychiatrists who would not look patients in the eye; and hospital staff who survived the Third Reich only to be following the very practices they escaped from.
I asked Deborah Baker why these sensational matters had been tucked away and lay silent inside the pages of the book and she replied,

I constructed the book in such a way so that these developments would come as revelations. But while these were certainly painful and dramatic moments in Margaret Marcus' young life, I don't see them as sensational. The 1950s were a time when the pressure to conform, at least in America, was enormous; those who refused often found themselves in institutions. Allen Ginsberg, the subject of my last book, was institutionalized and endlessly psychoanalyzed. His mother had been lobotomized, his friends had had insulin shock therapies, or they medicated or drank themselves into stupors to evade the pain of their failure to find a recognizable place in a very rigid society.

My own work as low-profile historian and biographer has shown that the piecing together of facts is a long process during which one tends to move along by filling gaps with conjecture while proceeding to seek validation. So I asked Deborah Baker whether she had done this here, and she said,

Initially, all I had were Maryam's letters to her parents. These letters told the story of her journey to Pakistan, her arrival in Mawdudi's household, the warm welcome that his family provided her and her introduction to the work of the Jama'at I Islami. I found these letters completely absorbing and, as is often the case at the outset of a project, I didn't think to question their reliability. When I got to the letter that called into question everything Maryam had led me to believe I was stunned and rather impressed that I had been led so far down the garden path. I wanted to duplicate that experience for the reader. I wanted the reader to be carried along and come upon the same precipice. I didn't want to get to the end of my research, having answered all the major questions about Maryam Jameelah, write up the story from that all-knowing perspective and hand the reader a tidy package of facts. Hence the use of conjecture throughout the book.

Did Deborah Baker always have the qualities of the detective and writer of suspense thrillers – or was it Maryam’s story and the way it unfolded before her that had brought them out? Even the fact that Margaret had been on Compazine, an antipsychotic and tranquilizer, comes as a shock, discovered long after the Paagal Khanaah letters appear.
She told me,

It was partly in the way her story was revealed to me, the removal of one veil after another, but it was also the challenge of making the reader aware of his or her own expectations---those assumptions and stereotypes we all carry in our heads, whether hawked by Islamic ideologues about "The West" or Western ideologues about “Islam." I wanted to unsettle the reader's bearings on these grandiose subjects, just as Maryam has unsettled mine.

After spending years thinking about Maryam Jameelah and researching her life what were her feelings about her now? She had written that Maryam’s letters were “wildly chatty,” and that, “Perusing them, puzzling over them day after day, I soon began to think of Margaret Marcus, with both fondness and slight condescension, as Peggy.” Later, when she finally met Maryam, in the most dramatic moment of this book (which sadly can no longer be enjoyed as such by anyone who has read this article), she experienced a chilly detachment and wanted to be done with the whole thing. “In the course of writing the book, I had many mixed feelings about Maryam Jameelah,” she agreed, “and only now, with the book finished, are they beginning to settle down.”

An interesting aspect of my interaction with Deborah Baker was her initial reaction to my questions. She mistook them to reflect hostility and scepticism about the entire undertaking, and she replied in a surly and increasingly exasperated tone. I was taken aback at first, but it struck me that I was probably not as good as a communicator as I fancied myself. The truth was, even Deborah Baker had experienced a major transformation in her perception of her subject in the course of this project. After all, the ability to respond without emotion and refrain from jumping to conclusions is an essential skill of the historian.
In any case, this did nothing to lessen how impressed I was with the book. It documents historical information about the Qur’an, the Sunnah and Hadith: how they were formed and what they constitute, and Mawdudi’s contribution to them. Equally fascinating are the physical details of the story – for instance the eight months Maryam spent in Pattoki, a tiny provincial town with no telephones and few cars. The narrow lanes between houses were largely reserved for donkeys, water buffalo, and the odd pony cart. Residents walked from one end to the other via rooftops.
For all her fascinating history, we exit with the image of Maryam as simply an old woman alone in an untidy little room in Lahore with little more than her faith, her library, and letters from her grandchildren for comfort – perhaps waiting, now, in eager anticipation of her three copies of this book. We can only wonder how she will feel when she reads it, and what answers she will have for the searing questions Deborah Baker asks her at the end.

the folded earth by Anuradha Roy

Love, hunger and death in an idyllic location
My first feeling as I started reading this book was a rising admiration for the author’s skill as I got drawn into the story. My second was embarrassment, at the memory of having mistaken it after a cursory glance at the author’s name and the pointedly environmental feel of the cover, for yet another tome of screechy pseudo-development ranting by Arundhati Roy, which had caused me to relegate it to the “no thank you” heap for weeks.
This books is set in Ranikhet. The heroine is Maya, a young woman from Andhra Pradesh with a tragedy behind her. She starts a new life here and this is her story and the story of the people she becomes involved with. There’s the Diwan Sahib, her landlord, once Munim of the Nawab of Surajgarh until the princedom acceded to India after Independence – but not before the Diwan himself had been arrested by the Nawab for treason. There’s the lovely young milkmaid Charu with a poignant story of her own. Maya’s parents and her husband feature in the story too, though we never actually meet them. Maya herself, as Anuradha Roy said in answer to a question I asked, is:

A rich, educated man's daughter. She has had a good education herself; she is a highly intelligent, untraditional woman who is a reader of all kinds of books and is in the constant company of man who is learned and cosmopolitan and with whom one of the things she does daily is read the international pages of the newspaper.Maya's mind has a way of wandering and making strange connections. She gets distracted easily, she often doesn’t focus when people are speaking. She thinks a great deal about her past and about other people, and this creates a prismatic sense of time so that her life with her father and then her husband become part of the present time of the narrative.

With the Himalaya in the backdrop, one of the major background themes of this book is trekking and mountain tourism. Hill life is well described and the flavour of a cantonment town, its local politics and loutish politicians enticingly caricatured. By the time I finished it, I felt a bit as if I’d lived ten years in Ranikhet too, as Anuradha Roy told me she has.

The Folded Earth also has stories from the life of Jim Corbett, from the turbulent times soon after India’s Independence, something about the relationship between Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru, and a heart-wrenching twist at the end.
This book is beautifully written and its story both gripping and plausible. I admired the author’s choice of issues to use as background. One of the things that upset me, though, was a cameo appearance by Ramachandra Guha, a real person and a respected historian, without any disclaimer or acknowledgement.
When I asked Anuradha Roy, she replied,

Ram is an old friend and he is an author we have published at Permanent Black. In the novel, Ram Guha is another of the scholars who arrive to meet the Diwan, in this case a scholar genuinely worried about the safety of valuable documents. The novel throughout plays around quite a bit at blurring the lines between fact and fiction and this is another instance. People who know Ranikhet spot many more instances beyond even the Corbett and Mountbatten angles. Plus for me, it's a private joke, of which too there are plenty in the book. As a writer yourself, you know we are entitled to have some fun while writing!

Now the thing I like best about Ramachandra Guha, even more than the quality of his work, is the fact that instead of using all the attention he gets from the media to transform into a rockstar, he has applied his common sense and clarity of thought not just in his writing but also in his personal life and remained a relaxed, unpretentious person. So I suppose to be drawn by a peer as a fictionalised character alongside Jawaharlal Nehru is more than a joke, it’s a compliment.
I then asked Anuradha Roy whether she was often mistaken for Arundhati Roy and how she dealt with it, and she replied,

Yes, particularly foreigners often mistake me for Arundhati Roy. There is a whole review of my first book on Goodreads that reviews it as her second book. Imagine the fate of the novelist Elizabeth Taylor. And there was another novelist called Winston Churchill...

The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Profundus and Snotbog arrive in India
My first reaction to this book was enjoyment – these four stories are well written and great fun. My second, however, was disappointment. With the name Moochander, I was expecting Pakistani stories. Yet these are clearly in the European tradition.
I mailed the author asking about this, and he wrote back (first kindly congratulating me on having won the match - it so happened that yesterday India won the semi-finals against Pakistan for the 2011 Cricket World Cup!) to say,

I wrote these stories for an international audience about eight years ago. I think children do not make distinction between stories as adults do. They are only interested in a good, fun story, regardless of which tradition it comes from.
In my childhood I read a lot of Urdu stories that were published for children, and later learned that some of them were adaptations of well known English language classics such as Oliver Twist, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and others.
I discovered English language children's fiction as an adult, and loved some of the stuff I read. I now feel that there should be more Urdu language story books available for children whose first language is Urdu but in the absence of good Urdu story books, adaptations from English language children's literature, or even direct translation of international children's literature will be more beneficial for the intellectual and creative development of children because it will expose them to new worlds through the magic of stories.
I have plans of publishing the stories in The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories collection in Urdu translation. They have been translated already. The translator has adapted them for Urdu language which is perfectly fine with me.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi also told me that he wrote these books in a span of six months. His wife Michelle is the illustrator of this book and I found her illustrations attractive too – imagining what I might feel if I was looking at them and having the stories read to me as many children are bound to.
This particular illustration comes from the story Profundus and Madam Snotbog, great fun, scary, and very Brothers Grimm. I felt doubtful about how Indian parents might feel about a story centred around cute pigs! A bit hesitantly, I asked Musharraf how come, since this is really more of a western concept and rather alien in our part of the world where pigs are traditionally considered disgusting. He replied, deadpan,

As these stories were written for an international audience, I felt free to use any animals I could think of. And in the West you will find many toys and children's books in which pigs are indeed depicted as cute. I understand that in the subcontinent we have a different take on the animal.

He also sent me a link to an interview he gave Fiona Fernandez at Mid-day where he says:

Probably, the characters came to the mind first. In the case of Profundus, the idea for the grab-itty-scope came first, I think. Madame Snotbog was modelled on a dear aunt of mine although I am not half as clever as Profundus. However, I'm not above stealing pies and regularly overdose on sweets. There are a lot of autobiographical details here for future researchers, I'm afraid.

Madame Snotbog turned out exactly like my aunt. So I was very pleased with that, although it was uncanny because Michelle has not met her. And now I guess it's best that they don't meet.

Though I would much rather have had a book more culturally appropriate for Indian children, there was one thing I particularly admired here and that is its approach to inclusion. The Giant of the Bakery is not just an adventure story where young readers will enjoy reading about cakes and breads – it’s also about the struggle of an immigrant. And it gives an artless glimpse into the life of a differently abled person. Moochhander, too, is a poignant look at aging.

As a child, I would have loved and treasured this book, reading it or perhaps demanding to have it read to me, over and over again. My children would have done the same. As an adult, what intrigues me most is the versatility of the author.
I have never met Musharraf but have liked and admired him since 2009 when I first read his novel Story of a Widow. It impressed me with an elegant style that grips you as it takes you into people’s lives and leads you, unawares, straight into the heart of a culture. (I can't find a link to the review I wrote for my Sunday Mid-day column but if you like you can read it on Musharraf's website).
I was surprised to read Hoshruba a short while later, a translation of an Urdu epic spun out by court storytellers in Lucknow in the nineteenth century, and to learn that Musharraf intended to translate the entire lot. And this was someone who, as a young man, had spent considerable time consuming books along with tea and omelettes at the canteen of NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi instead of attending lectures there till he realised that he was never going to be an engineer and might as well become a writer instead!
Hoshruba itself had a formidable 447 pages, and there were 23 volumes to go. Musharraf was going to be busy for many years, but he was kind enough to spend some time telling me about his journey as a writer.
So now, instead of asking Musharraf how and why these concepts (which would painlessly give children a broader emotional spectrum) wove their way into his book, I am going to guess that it was not done as a strategy but happened subconsciously. I suspect that Musharraf's writing falls into two categories, of which it is only the translating that taxes his left brain. His fiction, I would like to imagine, is simply a product of nothing but a joyful creative process, plucking stories out of thin air with no other intention than to create pleasure in the reader.

On two feet and wings by Abbas Kazerooni

The diary of an unusually courageous child
I was reading another book, one which I had actually been waiting for for several months, when I received this one and happened to pick up and idly flip through it.
Before I knew it, the pages had flown by and when I realised, startled, that I was already on page 50 – well it was time to face the embarrassing reality that, despite any pretension, I’m nothing but a sucker for a fascinating story.

Abbas is nine years old and his family, once among the most prominent in Iran, has been a victim of the Ayatollahs. To save him from being recruited into the army – the age has been lowered to eight – his parents have no option but to take him out of the country.
A series of events leads to little Abbas finding himself living alone in a seedy hotel in Istanbul and proceeding to have a series of fascinating adventures. His goal is to get a British visa and go and live in safety in the very country that his great grandfather funded a guerrilla opposition against when the rulers of Persia would not fight them. Accordingly, this book has three sections which tell us, respectively, about Abbas's early life in Tehran, his struggle in Istanbul, and a little of what happens after he arrives in England.

When I mailed Abbas Kazerooni, the author, to ask him how much of this was actually his own story, he replied, “I would say about 70 to 80 percent. Obviously I have used a lot of artistic license but you would probably be surprised to know that some of the more shocking parts actually happened.”

When I read a book, I try my best to avoid preconceptions. This means not discussing it with anyone beforehand, not reading reviews or opinions, avoiding the publisher’s note and the text on the book jacket, or any supplementary text inside the book which usually tries to impress you with how wonderful the author is and what a great books this is. I’d really rather find out for myself. As I read, I also try my best to remain impervious to opinions formed by previous books by this author, or previous knowledge of the author’s reputation. In this particular case I had never heard of the book or author before, so it wasn’t difficult to form an objective opinion. I enjoyed the book very much and though there were many phrases and words that I felt could have been tweaked for a better flow, I was so engrossed that they didn’t upset me too much.

Going online, I now found that this book had been published in the US in 2008 under the title The Little Man and if you like you can read the first part of that book here though I must say I found this version rather self indulgent compared to the casual style of the Indian edition.
I did feel that Indian readers would enjoy this book more than western ones who might tend to exoticise it more than we would. And when, for instance, a dog called Barfy turns up in the story, we would know it just meant Snowy rather than looking around for a vomit bag.

What I liked best about this book is that it can be read and enjoyed as much by children as by adults. After I finished, I had noticed that the book was dedicated to the loving memory of the author’s mother. Seeing this, and having observed the depth of feeling little Abbas repeatedly expressed for his estranged mother made me very curious to know the circumstances in which he had lost her. But when I asked, the author replied, “This will all be revealed in the sequel!”
Well I was longing to know what happened next, after the book got over, and find out exactly how poor Abbas went on to become someone who worked in successful theatre productions in the West End in London – and now lives in California where he has his own law firm and practices law when he's not writing semi-autobiographical novels – wow! But he would only say, to my dismayed impatience, “I do not want to give away too much and I will only tell you that the story gets more and more interesting and the protagonist is going endure a lot more!”
This of course brought back to me what a very intelligent and clear-thinking person the nine-year old Abbas had been, and I felt happy to think that he had done justice to that early promise.

Not Just Cricket by Vikram Dravid

There's more to life than World Cups
When I reached page 97, I suddenly realized that this was a really good book.
I had been reading slowly, enjoying the story about a typical cricket-playing boy from a middle-class family in Bombay. There had been brief glimpses of a world beyond. At page 97 the world beyond shone through, clear and unmistakable, and I understood how and why this book really wasn’t just about cricket. Cricket is the fabric; it’s also the substance of the plot. However, Not Just Cricket also carries glimpses into rich, deep aspects of life that can be revealed to most of us only through fiction because they are so removed from our scheme of things.
Most of the books I read these days are just too long. They go on and on, invariably repeating themselves, aiming to thrill the reader with flourish after flourish. As you long for them to end, all you can do is stretch your eyebrows in exasperation at that fundamental horror creative people seem to consider themselves entitled to – of having the output of their genius savaged just for the user. So after a long time, I was happy to be reading a book which ended too soon. It simply did not do justice to all that the author has to say.
Vikram Dravid is a doctor. He grew up in Bombay and now lives and works in the US. He certainly has the knack of telling a story and his characters are developed with skill, but there were some things I felt were lacking and I emailed him with my questions.

I found the fake names really annoying. Why Suchen Chembulkar? Especially, why Dalmeinkuchkala?! These names are parodies and more fitted to a comic or satirical genre. I found that in your text, which has a quite serene context, they formed abrupt and jarring interruptions. Was there a reason why you did this? And how much of the Pakistan tour you’ve described is as real and thinly disguised? I’m afraid I don’t know cricket so you will have to tell me in case there was a specific series you were talking about. I did enjoy stepping in and getting glimpses of Pakistan along with the team, though.
I was going to use the real names of current cricketers but was told that using the real name, particularly of a celebrity, in a fictitious scenario required their permission. I wanted to give the cricket an aura of authenticity, and not seem make-believe. Using thinly-disguised versions of current day stars, that most of the readers would likely be familiar with, allowed me to extrapolate their real life characteristics into my book without having to flesh them out.
Interestingly, readers have either been turned off or extremely tickled by the names. Dalmeinkuchkala refers to a previous chairman of the board who had a reputation of many unsavoury deals. I must say there was a little inspiration from Rushdie's use of Rani of Cooch Nahin etc, although I recognize that my book is not of the same genre or calibre. The tour is all made up.

Your style is neat and simple and I also admired your frequent linguistic flourishes. But … I would have been a bit more careful with the editing.
Being a first-time author, I sought a lot of advice regarding this. The manuscript has been edited umpteen times. I do think some of the usage may reflect my own peculiarities of language.
I really believe that I am more of a storyteller than a writer. In fact I am better at narrating verbally and sometimes my prose is gushy and has to be chopped up on the second go around.

What I really would have liked is more details of the glimpses you’ve given us into the fascinating lives of Arjun’s parents. I kept thinking kept thinking that you have the seed of more good books in some of the areas you’ve touched on there – in particular the aspects of rural medicine. Maybe a collection of short stories?
The two stories about Arjun's parents have been liked the most by all readers. They did start off as short stories, but because they fitted in well I used them to add layers and dimensions to those two characters and to tie in the narrative.

How did you find a publisher? And how’s the distribution going?
Being removed from India, with no direct access to publishers, I sent out routine emails to the big publishing houses. They weren't quick to respond. I found Cinnamon Teal on the web. They have been very responsive. However, people have found it difficult to get their hands on the book. I guess distribution could be better. For instance, I would love for it to be available in a chain of stores such as Crosswords. Currently it will be made available in select bookstores, I don't know which ones. I would love to be more involved. However, distance and the lack of wherewithal are stumbling blocks. The book has done very well in North America where it is available on Amazon.

What are you working on next?
I do have a sequel in mind, but am currently working on a string of short stories that tie in together with a common thread.